@Twitter Users #Fail as Branding Automatons

Just about everything people say on Twitter is public, offering marketers a rare chance to listen in on what folks are saying about their brands, and to trumpet their messages to the masses.

Unfortunately for the marketers, Twitter users fail spectacularly when it comes to disseminating branding messages to each other –- the stuff of which advertisers’ dreams are made. After all, word of mouth can make or break a company’s sales, and Twitter is nothing if not “word of mouth.”

People tend to use Twitter in a conversational way, rather than discussing their favorite brands and products. However, opportunities still exist for marketers, according to 360i's study.

Although some companies try to gin up interest by rewarding people financially or otherwise for talking about their brands, the vast majority of tweets don’t mention a brand –- and when they do, they’re usually just talking about Twitter, according to a study conducted by the digital marketing agency 360i (.pdf). The study also found that when tweeters do mention a brand, they’re not usually talking to someone who works at that company.

It may seem like no big revelation that people don’t feel the need to tweet directly with Kleenex after they sneeze — but not if you’re in marketing. If you are, Twitter apparently looks like a heaven where brands and people interact constantly, the same way tweeters interact with other people.

Apart from any number of organic methods of trying to market in Twitter, the service itself has taken only baby steps to position itself as an advertising platform — a dicey proposition overall given the expected sensitivities of the Twitter faithful. Still, in April, the service launched “Promoted Tweets,” which put messages from paying corporate customers at the top of some Twitter search pages, clearly marked as ads.

This isn’t advertising, per se, because the tweets are only sent to followers of the brand that’s paying for them. Twitter also said it would “attempt to measure whether the Tweets resonate with users and stop showing Promoted Tweets that don’t resonate.”

“Twitter is primarily for people, not corporations,” reads the first line of the study’s executive summary. “Those of us in the marketing industry tend to see Twitter as a marketing or professional networking tool, but it’s important to remember that it is a consumer-dominated medium.”

But when you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Marketers can’t help viewing Twitter as a massive opportunity to market.

However, the study finds, marketers can benefit from using Twitter to eavesdrop on what people are saying about their brands and tailor messaging to address that, rather than simply trying to tweet advertising messages to a twitterverse that simply doesn’t care. Another hard-won lesson: while celebrities only make up 0.4 percent of the conversation on Twitter, their reach is so significant that “by activating just one celebrity on Twitter, a marketer can reach [a thousand times] more eyeballs than he or she can with the average consumer.”

This is how marketers view Twitter users: as neural connections in the global brain, which are “activated” every time we mention their brand.

However, the study suggests, companies would do well to view Twitter not as “a megaphone,” but as “a conversation.” In other words, rather than trying to activate us, they need to address our concerns directly and transparently, becoming an organic part of the conversation. “Our tires were defective. Our oil rig does leak. Sorry. Here’s what we’re doing about it.”

The embattled BP would have done well to heed this lesson. In the early days of its oil spill — a crisis that reached its hundredth day Wednesday — BP failed to utilize Twitter and other social networks to tell everyone what was going on. Instead, it relied on television advertising and the purchase of keywords like “oil spill” on Google.

Other companies fared better amongst tweeters. The most commonly mentioned brands on the network, in order of popularity, are Twitter, Apple, Google, YouTube, Microsoft, Blackberry, Amazon, Facebook, Snuggie, eBay and Starbucks.

How can other companies make the list? According to 360i, they need to send more personalized messages directly to people. As things stand now, only 12 percent of the tweets sent by companies address specific Twitter users, but that will change if more marketers read this study. The next time you say something positive or negative about a brand on Twitter, you could find yourself in a conversation with the people behind it.

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